Exposing Union Treasure Trove

Both supporters and opponents seemed surprised this week when Bill C-377, the union transparency law, narrowly passed in the House of Commons after being watered down in committee.

It could have been a tougher bill, some of its supporters said with a sad sigh.

Under the amendments inserted to make the bill acceptable to nervous Tory MPs – in the end, five of them still voted against it anyway – only aggregate union expenses over $5,000 will have to be revealed, and union wages above $100,000 per year.

Unchanged is what many Conservative MPs feel is the meat of the bill: forcing unions to reveal how much time and money their staffs spend on political work unrelated to their real job of representing members.

Opinions are mixed on whether or not the Conservatives will be able to get the bill through the Senate in January or February, when it is expected to be put to a vote in the Upper Chamber.

Some in Ottawa say it should be easier to get C-377 through the Senate than it was to clear the House this week because appointed senators aren’t beholden to volatile voters the way MPs are.

Senators can vote their conscience without fear of losing their seats – as we’re seeing with the sports betting bill, which could be headed for oblivion despite huge support in gambling economies like Windsor.

But some claim it could be harder to get the bill through the Senate, where paid lobbyists hold sway rather than voters. The construction trade unions have many senators – both Liberal and Conservative – on a pretty tight leash. Or so they say.

Either way, many of my fellow CAW members and even some current and retired executive members I’ve talked to hope that the bill becomes law and that the sun finally shines in on the secret world of union finances.

Why? Some of us just want to see how the dues are being spent in a general sense. Almost no one in the rank and file of most Canadian unions can tell you how much money is in their strike fund, how much their union earns on investments, or how much our executives are really compensated for their work, in total.

In the CAW you can see an “audited” statement if you push hard enough (audited by one of the local’s own insiders, that is: the secretary-treasurer) but rarely are salaries or other spending details revealed. And you have to take it on faith they’re showing you everything.

No other major western democracy allows their unions to operate in such secrecy. It’s just not healthy, as Windsor members of Local 773 the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) learned this summer when their business manager was removed without explanation. They still haven’t been told why.

Union insiders I have talked to have been hearing tales for years about alleged union boondoggles, from exorbitant expense accounts to special pensions and even sweet mortgage deals for executives. Like me, a member of CAW Local 240, these union members want to know if there is any truth to these stories.

Opening union books to Revenue Canada should settle that question, one way or the other. Which could be a pretty good explanation of why some union bosses are fighting the passage of Bill C-377 so hard.

And finally there are the political reasons for wanting to see Bill C-377 pass. Some Conservatives believe that the real treasure trove hidden in union finances is a vast network of undocumented campaign influence bought and paid for during nearly every election in the country.

Of the $4 billion in union dues collected in Canada each year, tens of millions of dollars at the very least is believed to be spent on lobbying, advertising and staff time devoted to partisan election campaign work.

Little or none of those union election efforts are counted as official campaign contributions under Canada’s strict campaign spending limits. But they will have to be once Revenue Canada gets the details of all spending filed annually, as Bill C-377 requires.

If it’s true that large sums of union dues are being spent for partisan political purposes, that wasn’t Judge Ivan Rand’s written intent back in 1946 when he ruled that unions should be given compulsory dues collection rights to cover the cost of collective bargaining.

Rand must be spinning in grave to realize that his olive branch to help poor workers organize themselves for economic gain has been twisted into a political tax on those workers, a multimillion-dollar weapon wielded by fat cat union bosses paid more than today’s judges and cabinet ministers.

That wasn’t what those Windsor Ford workers were fighting for in 1945 when they formed a 100-day blockade of their plant on Riverside Drive, the strike that led to Rand’s famous compromise.

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